Why Women Still Can’t Have It All

[Sportofino]

It?s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here?s what has to change....

Interesting article

Quite long, and a bit American - but I enjoyed it.

[MsLydia]

Who really wants 'it all' anyway?

I just want to live my life the way I want to live it without being oppressed or discriminated against because of my sex.

[KRITIQ]

The article has been out and around for quite some weeks now with much discussion about how it really only relates to the most privileged women and is frankly, rather whiny.

Good that you enjoyed it I suppose, but I found it pretty useless.

MsLydia sums it up very well - exactly why feminism is still so important because we have not yet achieved that very basic thing yet.

[Margerykemp]

She touches on it but I dont think she emphasises enough: complete you family by 27 if you are aiming at a high level career at 45-55.

I don't think having babies later on helps women's careers at all long term.

[GetOrfMoiRing]

I enjoyed that article.

This bit resonated with me Millions of other working women face much more difficult life circumstances. Some are single mothers; many struggle to find any job; others support husbands who cannot find jobs. Many cope with a work life in which good day care is either unavailable or very expensive; school schedules do not match work schedules; and schools themselves are failing to educate their children. Many of these women are worrying not about having it all, but rather about holding on to what they do have.

There is another bit which says that parenting teenagers requires just as much input as when they were babies. That is certainly true. I never really felt guilty about working when dd was a baby, but I feel as guilty as hell at not being there for her when she needed me during her GCSEs and associated stuff.

The bit about sequencing is interesting, as I did it all backwards (baby then career) plus I followed the 1950s model in that I had dd very young, so she is a teenager now when I am in my mid-30s (when the vast majority of my contemporaries are having their first baby). It has worked well for me, I suppose.

I don't think it is possible to have a decent career (I am not a high flyer of Xenia levels but I am doing well), have a good relationship and be a good mother. I have not managed it. In my case the relationship fell by the wayside.

[Andifnotnow]

Very interesting. Pregnant with 2nd child (DD4), have been pursuing career at cost to DD for the last three years. Definitely agree that I can't seem to manage to have it all.
Employers not supportive, competing against people with more time and energy. Guilt ridden about DD separation anxiety and neglected in appearance, the joy of combining it all I need a .

Planning to take a 3 year career break for the baby now, because i've run out of will to have it all the second time around. I like my job. Suppose will have to transplant all my ambitions into DH and babies now

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Was there not a thread about this? I've had a look and can't find it, maybe it was in Chat not Feminism, but I'm sure it's been discussed?

I think her solution is too simple - she seems to be saying that there are all of these problems in society, which she hadn't quite realized until now, and they should be sorted out ... somehow. But how? And what does she plan to do for women who are not her demographic of 'highly educated, well-off women who are privileged enough to have choices in the first place' (implicitly, I think from that article, not disabled, and probably heterosexual ... not that it necessarily matters but you'd think it'd be second-nature to notice these things if you were her)?

I can't help getting the impression that she thinks she is making very radical comments (and she keeps saying how many people are shocked at her talking about her kids, or not giving the 'fatuous' speeches other people give), while actually patting herself on the back rather a lot.

Maybe I am being ungenerous. I just don't come away with any clear sense of 'oh, that's what we must do!', except that obviously academia in the States is a better bet for women than in the UK. And that's hardly useful information for a wide audience.

[fruitybread]

This was prob the thread LRD - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1516288-Had-it-up-to-HERE-with-having-it-all-Please-come-and-help-Viv-Groskop-with-her-Mumsnet-Academy-Family-and-Feminism-course -

I got a pasting there for saying, honestly, that having had to carry on with demanding full time work when my DS was small left me knackered, ill and very stressed, with the feeling I was enjoying neither my work nor being a mum. (I had 3 days off work, which I accept is pretty extreme - I'm self employed, they were exceptional circumstances).

I was accused of being 'overly dramatic' - which was hurtful crap as far I'm concerned. It took a long time and a trip to hospital before I could really admit to myself that I wasn't coping.

I don't have any answers (hence my thread on work/family/maternity leave in other countries) but it is helpful to hear similar experiences.

I dislike the phrase 'having it all' as much as the next feminist, but if we are talking about the possibility of combining a successful career with a family life, while staying healthy, happy and doing at least okay at both, then i have no answers, and the last couple of years have been a real eye opener for me. The best I can do is say 'it depends a lot on the work and on the family'. Other people manage it so obvs it is possible! but the deal breakers for me are 'how much time I want to spend being a parent' (I could have put DS into nursery before now but I didn't want to) - and how permanently knackered am I prepared to be.

[fruitybread]

So I've read the article now.....

It's so not what I was expecting from having read other people's comments. I see nothing 'whiny' in this (interesting adjective - usually kids and women get called 'whiny', very rarely men).

I think it's fairly radical in that it has caused a stir - and it steps away from the binary 'have a career or have children' stance that characterises this kind of discussion.

No, she doesn't offer many solutions, at all (I was encouraged when I read "going forward women would do well to frame work-family balance in terms of the broader social and economic issues that affect both men and women." yes! I thought. Then there was very little about what that means and so I'm no further forward with how I might frame things, sorry).

BUT she IS articulating something that is striking a chord among some of us, isn't she? I think articulating some female experience even if it isn't palatable to some is fairly radical. I can forgive her for not coming up with a complete set of solutions - sometimes articulating the problem is the necessary first stage. Plenty of examples in the history of feminism show that.

I agree too she doesn't focus much on women less high flying than her, beyond acknowledging that they have it hard. But noticeable on the other thread was a lack of willingness from posters attacking her to talk about women who aren't 'high flying', which I didn't like.

I do remember Kate Millet saying something about not just wanting a slice of the pie, but wanting to 'change the recipe'. This article is just that, really.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Ohh ... that might well have been it, thanks.

Sorry, I realize now I'd had the thread open ages before I posted, so I cross-posted with others saying it'd been discussed, sorry about that.

[minipie]

Of course it's possible to have a family and a top flight career.

But, given the long and unpredictable hours of top flight careers, I think you need:

1. a DH/DP who is willing to take on the traditional "mum" role - ie always get home to do pick up, be the one who is there when they are sick, be the one who remembers about sports kit and worries about school reports
   
   and
   
   
2. to be willing yourself to take on the traditional "dad" role, i.e. not see as much of your kids, not remember the minutae of their daily lives but leave most of that to your partner, dedicate your day to work and fit children round the edges.
   
   There is an alternative which is have round the clock nannies and PAs but that is only financially possible once you have already "made it" - so doesn't address how you get there in the first place.
   
   Sounds like the writer of the article managed 1) but not 2). But that doesn't mean all women are like that. Some may be perfectly happy taking the traditional "male" role in the family.
   
   Of course this unbalanced set up is not great (IMO) whichever parent takes the primary carer or primary breadwinner role. It would be far better if high flying jobs did not require such long and/or unpredictable hours to make this set up necessary. But that is a long way off.

[Sportofino]

I thought the point of the article was that someone who had "had it all" realised that in fact it did not work, and was looking to the very top to change the presenteesim culture, amongst other things. To be honest, if someone with HER profile realises things have to change, and suggests tentative ways of doing it, that can only be a GOOD thing?

[Sportofino]

Bearing in mind she has access to ears the rest of us could only dream of shouting in.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

That's true, sporto.

I just felt I wanted to have more stuff about what to do, and her ideas didn't quite deliver.

I would be interested to know how it played in the US.

[summerflower]

I don't think it is possible to have a decent career (I am not a high flyer of Xenia levels but I am doing well), have a good relationship and be a good mother. I have not managed it. In my case the relationship fell by the wayside.<

I tend to agree with this, but I think it is partly that you are then juggling two careers, and there are really obvious inequalities - speaking from experience, it is mostly the case that the man continues to progress and the woman (main childcarer) slows down. I think that can create an inequality as well as the obvious pressures of man needing support, needing time as a couple, etc - something has to give. I found it easier as a single parent, tbh, because I had fewer demands on my time.

Apart from that, I pretty much said everything I wanted to on the other thread linked above.

[Sportofino]

I don't agree either (personally) that you can have it all. I think I have been the one to suffer `stress/healthwise and also emotionally speaking, as it might be natural, or conditioned, but the truth is I try to put my child and her needs first - and this is not true of dh. And I do think that babies needs are simple are more easily taken care of than older children. So maybe the article resonated with me on that level.